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Our Countdown of 2015's Top Toys

It’s been a busy year in the toy world, with lots of great new releases, such as the incredibly popular Live Pets, TY’s Cecil the Lion Beanie Baby, and a whole host of fantastic new Star Wars toys. We’ve taken a look back over the past year to see which items most consistently captured your imaginations. In order to give you an idea of the sheer range of popular 2015 toys and games, we’ve divided our top-selling toys into two categories: pocket money toys and best-sellers over £10.

Pocket Money Favourites

Our top selling pocket money items are in many ways both surprising and perfectly logical. These are the toys that have been bought in the greatest quantites throughout the year, and we found that it's largely those classic games that, at some point or other, we've all played that live on the most.

5.The dice has been a firm favourite for milennia, and here it still is, on our 2015 list of best-selling toys! Presumably that's because we all know, as did the Ancient Greeks, apparently, that at the heart of a good game is a good dice! Its fantastic to see that something so simple, but seemingly fundamental, can still hold its own for popularity.

4. In a similar vein, we found that good old fashioned playing cards have also managed to maintain their status and have proved as popular as ever, providing great entertainment value for a whole range of occasions and across all age ranges; little wonder that they were bought in great numbers all year round then!

3. Another favourite over the past year, and the perfect purchase on a pocket money budget, were the Hot Wheels Basics Cars. With a variety of different miniature die cast vehicles to choose from, Hot Wheels has something great to offer for any junior car enthusiast; something that hasn’t changed since the late 1960s.

2. Our second best-selling pocket money item has done impressively well, especially when you consider that it was only released four months ago! The LEGO® Minifigures Series 14 Monsters has proven to be extremely popular, and in high demand. And rightly so. This series of Minifigures includes a Zombie Pirate and a Monster Rocker—really, what’s not to love?! Overall 2015 has proven to be a good year for Minifigures, with four of the top ten best-selling toy items being the various series of these fantastic little LEGO people. And we’re very pleased to announce that the latest instalment, LEGO Minifigures Series 15, is now available in store and online!

1. In terms of the sheer quantity of items sold from our Toy department in the past year, though, nothing comes even close to beating one particular toy… Care to hazard a guess? You may be pleased and surprised to learn that it’s the marble! In fact, we sold almost double the amount of our small 14-17m marbles than we did the series 14 Minifigures! And the medium, 22-25m, marble ranked impressively high on our list as well.

The marble has enjoyed over 150 years as a firm favourite, and a childhood ally for multiple generations, so we’re delighted to see that its popularity hasn’t diminished with time. Marbles are often best selected in person, as the right marble can just catch your eye, so why not pop in to store to see our full range, and choose yourself a winning marble!

Top Selling £10 and Up Toys

5. No list of best-selling toys is really complete without at least one edition of Monopoly. And, we’re proud to say that on this occasion it’s the Oxford edition that has made it onto our top-sellers list! Great for a little Oxford tourism on a rainy day. You can buy up The Kassam Stadium or The Ashmolean Museum, or even the home of Boswells itself, Broad Street! No arguments here, this is a great game.

4. Our next toy favourite is a great travel game for all of the family, aaand it looks like a banana. No, seriously, it does. Bananagrams is a clever word game that stretches your vocabulary, is fun, educational, and comes in a banana pouch that makes it really portable and easy to spot in your bag. Having first been released only 10 years ago Bananagrams is possibly the least established best-seller mentioned here—pretty remarkable to have been one of 2015’s favourites then! We’re impressed!

3. Wowing and frustrating all who’ve tried their hand at it since 1980 (when it was released internationally), the Rubik’s cube has lost none of its prominence. But then, for some of us, 36 years doesn’t sound like anywhere near enough time to finish one of these incredible and complex puzzles (we’re told that its possible in 10 seconds!). As a perennial favourite, the Rubik’s cube has managed to hold its spot as a best-seller with relative ease. We should have more stock in soon, but if you can't wait that long, there are now new Rubik’s challenges to attempt and lose your patience with too, such as the Rubik’s Twist and the Rubik’s Void.

2. Star Wars kind of had to make an apperance somewhere on this list, and it hasn't disappointed. In thenumber two spot on the list is a LEGO® Star Wars item: the LEGO Jedi Interceptor. While this set has vanished from our shelves at lightspeed, don’t worry, there are still plenty of other great LEGO Star Wars sets in stock for you to try your hand at in 2016.

1. Any guesses as to what the most successful toy over £10 was over the past year? If you guessed that it was something you build out of LEGO®, then you’re very warm indeed. In fact it was the LEGO Ideas, limited edition, LEGO Birds set, which flew off our shelves and sold out phenomenally quickly in the run up to Christmas. We can only imagine that there are some fantastic examples of these birds now all over Oxfordshire as a result. While we don’t have any more of this particular LEGO set, luckily LEGO Ideas has not been idle. We still have their LEGO Dr Who set in stock, as well as their latest release, LEGO The Big Bang Theory, which is now in store and online! Keep an eye out for more limited editions on our website throughout the year!

2016 looks set to be another great toy year, with lots more exciting things to come from LEGO®, a summer of superhero flicks that doubtless promise some great merchandise, not to mention The BFG, Angry Birds and Ghostbusters! And who knows what else lies ahead! Plus, of course, those classic items won’t be going anywhere fast, they’re classics for good reasons. And, beyond the best selling items of course there’s something to be said for those toys that speak more personally to individual tastes. Whatever lies on the horizon though, here’s to a fantastic, toy filled 2016!